Knowing without Experiencing: A Non-Experiential Structural Cognition Model of a Creator
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 16, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21392514 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Counterfactual thinking Dualism Thought experiment Embodied cognition Ontology Argument complex analysis State computer science Epistemology Cognitive science Counterfactual conditional Object grammar Natural archaeology Possible world Metaphysics Normative Cognitive psychology Bridge graph theory Modal |
| Key points | Proposes the Non-Experiential Structural Cognition Model (NESCM) as an alternative to anthropomorphic theism, describing a creator that lacks phenomenal experience but directly cognizes structures and exercises analogical agency. |
Abstract
This article develops a conditional, non-anthropomorphic model of a creator from a distinction between two epistemic relations: phenomenally undergoing a state and cognitively grasping its structure, causes, modal profile, and consequences. The distinction does not entail substance dualism or solve the hard problem of consciousness. It supports a narrower claim: complete structural cognition need not require tokening the phenomenal state cognised. On that basis, the article proposes the Non-Experiential Structural Cognition Model (NESCM). The model describes a creator as a noetic source that lacks creaturely phenomenal experience and reactive emotion, yet directly cognises actual and possible structures and exercises an analogical form of agency. It then connects this account to an open future, graded freedom, creator-world dependence, and a non-interventionist account of natural order. Future contingents may be unsettled without being unintelligible: the creator cognises every accessible history, conditional probability profile, counterfactual consequence, and subsequent change in those profiles, without selecting each token outcome. The creator is constitutively atemporal with respect to the grounding of the world but relationally temporal with respect to newly actualised states. Possible worlds are compared through structural robustness: coherence, viability, resilience, generativity, differentiated complexity, diversity, and open development. These criteria are not moral goods or a proof of creation; they state the bridge assumptions under which the model operates. The article argues that NESCM offers a more internally explicit alternative to anthropomorphic theism while acknowledging its central liabilities: non-phenomenal agency, the ontology of objective probability, and relational change in the creator.